Novocain, a local anesthetic, is the ammonium salt of procaine.
b. Why is procaine hydrochloride used rather than procaine?

Question

Novocain, a local anesthetic, is the ammonium salt of procaine.

Chemical structure of procaine, a local anesthetic, with labeled components including amine and ester groups.

b. Why is procaine hydrochloride used rather than procaine?

Accepted Answer

Welcome back everyone. Benzocaine, a widely used local anesthetic is often administered as benzocaine hydrochloride in clinical settings. Why is benzocaine hydrochloride preferred over benzocaine? So to answer this specific question, we went to draw the structure of benzocaine hydrochloride. And we can see that using the structure of benzocaine. So now we have benzene, we're going to begin by drawing the benzene ring. Let's add the first cy chain which consists of an ester carba oxygen, an ethyl group. And now hydrochloride essentially means that we are performing an acid base reaction between the nitrogen with a long pair of electrons and HCL, right. So essentially, we know that nitrogen is capable of capturing hydrogen. This essentially produces NH three NGEN gets a formal positive charge and we have a counter ion which is the chloride anion. Now, what can we see regarding this structure? Well, it is simply an ionic salt and because it is ionic, it essentially means that it is more soluble than a molecular compound with no charge. So we can conclude that it is more soluble in water, right? We can essentially recall the rule like dissolves like whenever we have an ionic salt it will definitely be more soluble in water than a molecular compound. Right, essentially polarity dramatically increases, especially when we're looking at ionic compounds. And now if this structure benzocaine hydrochloride is more soluble in water, we can essentially conclude that it will have a better absorption and effectiveness, better absorption and effectiveness. And that would be our final answer. We essentially understand that the given salt is more soluble in water, which results in a better absorption and effectiveness. Thank you for watching.

Novocain, a local anesthetic, is the ammonium salt of procaine.

b. Why is procaine hydrochloride used rather than procaine?

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Key Concepts

Local Anesthetics

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pH and Solubility

Novocain, a local anesthetic, is the ammonium salt of procaine.b. Why is procaine hydrochloride used rather than procaine?